#171 - Michael Saylor - Why You Feel Poorer (And Why AI Will Make It Worse)

**Michael Saylor** (0:00)
There's going to be an explosion in prosperity because a billion robots will do all the work.

**Peter McCormack** (0:05)
You got 10 years to stake your claim in that world.

**Michael Saylor** (0:08)
The currency supply measured in dollars is continuing to expand, probably expanding 7% a year.
It's been expanding about 7% a year for 100 years. People that don't own assets are suffering from that monetary debasement without realizing it. Human capital is going to be demonetized. So what is scarce desirable property? Bitcoin simply represents the highest form of capital that the human race has yet to discover. White color bots are here right now. Make sure that you're not in the critical path of what the AIs can automate.

**Peter McCormack** (0:46)
This show is brought to you by my lead sponsor, Iron, the AI cloud for the next big thing. Iron builds and operates next generation data centers and delivers cutting edge GPU infrastructure, all powered by renewable energy. Now, if you need access to scalable GPU clusters, or are simply curious about who is powering the future of AI, check out iron.com to learn more, which is I R E n.com. Michael, hi. How are you? I'm good. This is the first time we've done this in just about two years. It was May 24, we did this last.
Since then, there's been a continuation of our money changing. I think a lot of people are sensing they're getting poorer, but don't really understand why. Can you explain to them what's really happening?

**Michael Saylor** (1:33)
Yeah. Well, I think the overarching dynamic is that the currency supply, measured in dollars, is continuing to expand, probably expanding 7% a year. It's been expanding about 7% a year for 100 years, and that currency printing goes to finance wars, foreign wars, trade wars, social programs, government deficits, any kind of political program. I don't think that's new. It's been going on for thousands and thousands of years.
The last two years have been no different.

**Peter McCormack** (2:09)
And would you say, therefore, it is those people who don't own assets are paying for government expansion without even realizing it?

**Michael Saylor** (2:17)
I think everybody pays for government in their own way. It's true that people that don't own assets are suffering from that monetary debasement without realizing it for the most part.
Government is expensive, right? It's always very expensive whenever you have political ambitions. And it's got to be paid for either with taxes or with inflation or with some kind of confiscation or regulation of some sort that impairs somebody's property rights.

**Peter McCormack** (2:53)
So is this how the system should work or is meant to work? Is there an alternative?

**Michael Saylor** (2:58)
I don't know if there's an alternative. I mean, I've read 50,000 pages of history and it didn't work any better in Babylon or Egypt or Greece or Phoenicia or Carthage or Rome or Russia or China or India or Pakistan or South America or anywhere in Europe. And if you read Rothbard's history of America before the Revolution, Conceived and Liberty, every single colony had bouts of debasement, hyperinflation, and they all taxed or inflated their own currencies or defaulted on their credit instruments in order to support their programs. And that means Massachusetts, when Massachusetts was more than one colony, multiple colonies of Massachusetts were defaulting on their credit and debasing their currency. And it also happened in Rhode Island and Virginia and South Carolina and Georgia and North Carolina.
And during the Revolutionary War, the Continentals printed currency and that got debased, but every state paid all of its bills with credit and they defaulted on that. And then the driver for the Constitution and the formation of the United States was the federal government to absorb all these debts. And Rothbard, who is a Libertarian, he laments in the fifth volume of Conceived in Liberty that the real problem was the states weren't smart enough to default on their credit and the Massachusetts colony was trying to pay their debt back at par. And that created a Shays' Rebellion, a tax rebellion, and that catalyzed the breakdown of the Confederacy and the formation of the United States, which he laments was an awful thing.

**Peter McCormack** (4:54)
So if you've read 50,000 pages of history, where would you say we are right now in terms of the cycle of currency? Because I'll give you my experience of the UK.
We're experiencing currency debasement at a level probably the highest and fastest in my lifetime. And we're seeing certainly a crushing of the middle class. So in that cycle, where do you think we are? And what should people expect over the next five, 10, 15 years? I know you don't have a crystal ball, but...